3 ms·

Keeping notes and notebooks is a critical skill for any top-tier engineer. I love to share this quote for that very reason: For this you keep a lab notebook.

by urda 9y ago

Keeping notes and notebooks is a critical skill for any top-tier engineer. I love to share this quote for that very reason: For this you keep a lab notebook. Everything gets written down, formally, so that you know at all times where you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going and where you want to get. In scientific work and electronics technology this is necessary because otherwise the problems get so complex you get lost in them and confused and forget what you know and what you don’t know and have to give up. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values Robert M. Pirsig

jordwest 9y ago
Starting this week I've been keeping a development diary, inspired by another post [1] on HN. I'd been hesitant to do so until now, thinking everything I wrote would go to waste as I'd never look at it or even remember what I had written. But after giving it a go, I think that even if I never look at my logs again, I'll continue to write them. The key for me has been to continuously write to it almost as if it were an extension to my brain, rather than just writing things up after the fact. I'm only on day 4, but so far some benefits I've noticed: - Writing down what I'm about to do before I do it helps me stay focused. - I can quickly grep to find a command I ran in the past, along with my stream of consciousness when I ran it. - I can pick up where I left off in no time. The ramp up time after distractions has diminished to almost nothing. - I have tangible output at the end of every day, where otherwise it would have felt like I accomplished nothing. Specifically, when working on those problems that don't seem to have any tangible output, like debugging some tricky bug. At the end of the day, instead of just telling myself "I fixed this issue", I now have hard evidence (for myself) that I actually spent the day working through a long rigorous debugging process to fix the issue. This helps me stay motivated and ward off that imposter syndrome. - I feel less stressed when I'm stuck on something. I have a hunch that it's similar to how keeping a personal journal helps to process emotions. - Writing out my process makes me less likely to go off on a tangent, or at least to be more aware that I am in fact going off on a tangent. - It helps me keep the bigger picture in mind, sort of like rubber duck debugging. Amazingly, I've been writing about 5000 words per day (though that includes pasted code and command output) and yet I'm getting more work done each day. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14382965 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14382965

by urda 9y ago

jordwest 9y ago

Starting this week I've been keeping a development diary, inspired by another post [1] on HN. I'd been hesitant to do so until now, thinking everything I wrote would go to waste as I'd never look at it or even remember what I had written. But after giving it a go, I think that even if I never look at my logs again, I'll continue to write them. The key for me has been to continuously write to it almost as if it were an extension to my brain, rather than just writing things up after the fact. I'm only on day 4, but so far some benefits I've noticed: - Writing down what I'm about to do before I do it helps me stay focused. - I can quickly grep to find a command I ran in the past, along with my stream of consciousness when I ran it. - I can pick up where I left off in no time. The ramp up time after distractions has diminished to almost nothing. - I have tangible output at the end of every day, where otherwise it would have felt like I accomplished nothing. Specifically, when working on those problems that don't seem to have any tangible output, like debugging some tricky bug. At the end of the day, instead of just telling myself "I fixed this issue", I now have hard evidence (for myself) that I actually spent the day working through a long rigorous debugging process to fix the issue. This helps me stay motivated and ward off that imposter syndrome. - I feel less stressed when I'm stuck on something. I have a hunch that it's similar to how keeping a personal journal helps to process emotions. - Writing out my process makes me less likely to go off on a tangent, or at least to be more aware that I am in fact going off on a tangent. - It helps me keep the bigger picture in mind, sort of like rubber duck debugging. Amazingly, I've been writing about 5000 words per day (though that includes pasted code and command output) and yet I'm getting more work done each day. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14382965 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14382965